Apparently, Pumpkin Growing is Sort of Complicated

Since I have committed to growing these pumpkins, I decided to do a little research on how to do it right.

1. Amend the soil - check.

2. Pick your variety - too late.

3. Plant seedlings - planted themselves.

4. Water - All the time

5. Fertilize with nitrogen during vine growth, phosphorus during fruit set, and potassium during fruit growth. Mine are at the fruit set stage, so bone meal will do the trick.

Here is where it gets weird. Apparently, there are a bunch of crazy people who grow pumpkins competitively. They want you to pull all but one baby pumpkin off the vine. Then they want you to force the vine to grow perpendicular to the pumpkin. There was also a pretty complicated set of instructions on pruning pumpkin vines. In order to insure pumpkin bloodlines, these prized pumpkins must practice birth control by putting baggies over the female blooms. The female blooms must then be hand pollinated. No bees allowed, hmmm.

I don't know if you can tell how much bigger this guy is from yesterday. It is growing fast.

Here is another a few days younger.

Here is an itty bitty baby.

I counted about eight pumpkins on two vines. Should I cull a few of them or let them all live?

How To Lose Control of Your Garden in 10 Easy Steps

1. Make a Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween

2. Compost pumpkin innards

3. Wait five months

4. Spread compost in your little garden

5. Mistake pumpkin seedlings for squash seedlings

6. Leave the pumpkin vines in after realizing your mistake

7. Fertilize the pumpkin vines

8. Water the pumpkin vines

9. Refuse to remove pumpkin vines because of baby pumpkin cuteness

10. Watch in horror as pumpkin vines take over your tiny garden

It took two pictures to capture this one. First growing amongst the peppers

Now wrapped around the birdbath and headed toward the road. That vine is at least sixteen feet long.

Opps, here is another one.

The little baby pumpkin. It gets bigger every day.

You Think The Weather is Hot Wait til You Taste This

James at Double Danger wanted to know how to make my hot sauce and Lisa at Miller Time had a good idea for an addition to my pickled peppers.

First gather the ingredients. Serrano peppers, chili pequeno peppers, one lonely red noodle been, sea salt, and vinegar.

Chop up the serrano peppers. Put the red serranos and chili piquenos in the food processor or blender. Put the green ones in a Mason jar. Cover the green chilis with vinegar and a little salt and store in the refrigerator. Lisa suggested putting some green beans in with the pickled peppers for a hot and tasty snack.

Add vinegar and salt to the red peppers (2 tablespoons salt per every 1/4 cup of vinegar) and process until the peppers are pureed. A blender works better, but I burned mine up this spring, so I had to use the food processor. Add additional vinegar to the peppers if needed. The sauce should be thin enough to poor easily. You DO NOT want this stuff thick. I know that is a lot of salt, but this is a condiment, not a dip. This sauce can also be made with habaneros and scotch bonnets or a mix of all these peppers. I use whatever is ripe. If you use habaneros the sauce will be orange instead of red.

Poor the hot sauce in a glass jar and refrigerate. Now for the disclaimers

1. Aunt Debbi is not responsible if you hurt yourself.

2. Do not put the hot sauce in a container with a metal lid. It will corrode the metal. I AM NOT KIDDING.

3. Make this in a well ventilated area. If you have ever smelled pepper spray, that is approximately what this will smell like in your kitchen.

4. Wear gloves, this will burn your skin and even worse things will happen if you do it barehanded and then rub your eyes.

5. This will turn into a "Hey y'all watch this" food as bubbas try to outdo each other seeing who can eat the most.

6. Eat only in small quantities. If you eat too much you will pay for it in a horrible way the next day.

7. I am the only person in our household who can eat this stuff.

My hot sauce does not have a name. Would y'all like to name it for me?

Poor Farm Tour

Tonight our master gardener group toured the Kaufman County Poor Farm. The farm was established in the 1880's to house and provide for the counties indigent citizens. The original farm was 408 and a third acres. Above is a picture of the original gate into the yard of the supervisors house.

Above is a picture of the jail. This was in use through the 1950's. An inmate painted pictures on the wall. Unfortunately, we could not view the interior.

This is the only remaining original building. It is the barracks and kitchen.

Above is a picture of the cellar. None of us had ever seen one built quite like this.

During the small pox epidemic in 1900 the Poor Farm was used as a quarantine camp.

There is a silo, lake, well, barns, chicken coop, and some old farm equipment remaining. There is a cemetery, which remains on county property, but no longer part of the poor farm. It is still in used for burials of indigent citizens.

The plan is to turn the remaining acres and buildings into a museum.

Unfortunately, there has been some recent vandalism. That will explain the boarded up windows. During our fall Scarecrow Festival, there is a ghost walk at the Poor Farm. There is also an archaeological fair held there in the spring.

Hot Afternoon Bunny Drama or Abby has a Bad Day

It is 102 here and feels like 107. Usually, we put a couple of frozen water bottles in the rabbit hutch to keep the bunnies cool. I forgot to freeze them last night so we had to bring all four rabbits inside to keep them safe and cool. So we have four rabbits, two cats, three kids, me and a German shepherd in the house. There is only one kennel. Usually, Abby stays in there. We have to keep either the daddy bunny or the rest of the bunnies in the kennel to avoid additional bunnies. Gotta keep em separated - nuff said. So at least one bunny at a time is in the living room being babysat by a monkey. The only one having a hard time is Abby.

First she got in trouble for trying to give these a bath.

Then this one scratched her on the nose when she tried to give her a kiss.

Then this one chased her out of the living room. How humiliating.

Abby is not having a good day.

Buzzed

When I walk through my garden in the morning. There are lots of visitors. Cicadas, hover flies, butterflys, grasshoppers(grrr), dragon flies, wasps, and bumble bees. The bumble bees buzz by my head almost every day. This is a little startling, but I have learned not to swat. The bees will not sting unless disturbed (touched) while nectaring or when they feel the hive is threatened. This is a live and let live situation. I rarely get stung and the garden is covered up in bumble bees and wasps.

Unfortunately, I have not seen many honey bees this year. I look for them, they just don't seem to be around. This morning, I found one. She was nectaring on this sun flower. She buzzed off before I could snap her picture. Boy, was I happy to see that little critter.

Here is a short list of things to grow and provide to help out the bees

1. Nectar and pollen flowers. I like zinnias.

2. Violet colored flowers.

3. Bees like a bloom with a bulls eye - Dark eye.

4. Puddled water

5. Variety of blooming plant material.

6. Native plants.

The don't list is pretty straight forward. Pesticides are out. Even many organic pesticides are not selective. They will harm a bee just like they will harm a squash bug. If the bee is visiting a squash bloom you sprayed with poison to kill the squash bug, guess who else gets nuked. Oh and anyone who wants to get into the argument about BT, that's fine, but it will kill butterfly caterpillars, just like it will kill cabbage loopers. Just saying.

One other odd factoid. Bees can't see red.

Here is some moth Middle Monkey found. I think it had just come out of it's chrysalis and had not pumped up its wings yet.

Site Meter is Causing Blog Problems.

I have noticed that several of the blogs I like to read as well as my own were having internet explorer problems. VP sent me a message and it turns out that my sitemeter was the problem. Here is the web address she sent me with an explanation. Thanks VP. I removed it from the blog, and now all is well. This is sort of sad, because I love my sitemeter. It let me know all kinds of cool stuff like where readers come from and why. Someone got here once looking for a fracus tree - Teehee, people are crazy. Anyway, when they fix the problem I will reinstall the sitemeter. This may mean I start over, but that is okay. If you are having trouble with your blog and internet explorer, take a look at your sitemeter, it may be the culprit.